ANNIE McCANN - 16 yo (2008) - Baltimore MD

Annie McCann's parents desperately want information about the death of
their 16-year-old daughter, whose body was found behind a Baltimore
trash bin last year after she ran away from her Alexandria, Va., home.
But the father of a teenage boy recently charged with stealing the
McCanns' car on the day the girl died says his son can't provide it.

"This is a dead end for what they want," Bryant Woodley Sr. said in an interview. "The boys don't know nothing."

He asked that his son, 16, not be named. The boy, a senior in high
school, and another 16-year-old male have been charged as juveniles
with auto theft, conspiracy and unauthorized use. They are not charged
in McCann's November 2008 death, and they won't be, police spokesman
Anthony Guglielmi said Thursday.

"This is not a homicide," he said. "DNA evidence has conclusively
revealed that this was a suicide, and that's the Police Department's
position."

But the McCanns don't accept that. They called the mayor's office last
month and wrote an opinion piece published in The Sun a day later,
criticizing what they characterized as police inactivity. And they
recently told a television reporter that somebody knows more, including
the boys accused of auto theft.

That's the report Woodley saw on his way out the door Thursday morning,
prompting him to call The Baltimore Sun to "speak up for these young
boys."

They're suspected of removing McCann's body from her parents' white
Volvo sedan, dumping it next to a public housing trash bin in Upper Fells Point
and going on a joy ride. A police report shows one boy's fingerprint
was found in the car, and that teen named Woodley's son as an
accomplice, the father said.

Woodley said his son was never inside the car, but that the
high-schooler still probably knew what was happening and didn't do
anything to stop it. And that appalls Woodley, as does the death of the
young woman and its effect on her family - a pain he says he can't
imagine feeling himself.

Police have been interviewing his son for a year; the boy even talked
with the McCanns' private investigator, he said. And always, Woodley
said, the boy told the same story. He was arrested on the auto theft
charges late last month, shortly after the girl's family called the
mayor's office.

He was taken out of school and into custody, Woodley said. Then he was
held overnight and released to his parents under electronic home
surveillance.

"The kid can't live his life," Woodley said. "I feel like it's a witch hunt, like somebody's got to pay."

Parents of Annie McCann sue City of Baltimore in her death
By Suzanne Kennedy
September 30, 2010 - 08:34 pm

A Fairfax County couple is suing the City of Baltimore.

At the center of the fight, is how the Baltimore Police Department handled the death investigation of their daughter, Annie McCann.
Annie ran away from home and three days later she was found dead in Baltimore. Her parents say Baltimore Police did an inadequate job of investigating their daughter's death.
Mary Jane and Dan McCann say they are in a suspended state of grief. Their 16-year-old daughter was found dead in Baltimore in November 2008.
The West Potomac High School student ingested a lethal dose of lidocaine, a chemical found in the antiseptic Bactine.
Police say McCann was a runaway who committed suicide. Her parents dispute that finding.
The McCann's believe their daughter was poisoned by a killer. But police say a lengthy investigation proves otherwise.
Her parents believe the police detectives were lazy, saying there isn't even enough poison in the bottle of Bactine their daughter had to kill her.
They're now filing an $8 million lawsuit against the City of Baltimore.
"We've poured ourselves into finding out what happened to our daughter," Dan McCann said. "All we want is the truth and if we're wrong, we just want it explained how we're wrong. I can tell you this: the Baltimore Police Department is wrong. They missed this badly."
Nearly two years after their daughter left home, the McCanns say they struggle to make it through every day.

http://www.tbd.com/articles/2010/09/parents-of-annie-mccann-sue-city-of-baltimore-in-her-death-16732.html

Annie McCann’s parents keep pushing death probe

By Tom Jackman
Posted at 04:30 AM ET, 01/23/2012

If your 16-year-old daughter from Fairfax County suddenly turned up dead in a Baltimore housing project, would you rest until you knew the full story? Daniel McCann and Mary Jane Malinchak-McCann refuse. Last week, they revealed more startling information about the mysterious death of their daughter Annie, and said in a press conference that Baltimore police still aren’t interested in pursuing the case.

To recap, on Halloween in 2008, Annie McCann ran away from their Groveton area home with $1,000 in cash, clothes and jewelry. Two days later, her body was discovered in Baltimore, where she’d almost never gone. There were no signs of trauma on her body. After the medical examiner ruled that Annie had died from lidocaine poisoning, believed to have come from drinking a bottle of Bactine disinfectant, Baltimore police treated the death as a suicide.

The McCanns don’t buy that, in part because a renowned pathologist has told them there wasn’t enough lidocaine in one bottle of Bactine to be fatal. The Maryland medical examiner disagreed, and Baltimore detectives consulted with Bayer, the manufacturer of Bactine, who said there was enough lidocaine in the product to kill.

[UPDATE: After this story was posted, the McCanns provided a 2009 letter from Bayer saying there is 3.75 grams of lidocaine hydrochloride in a bottle of Bactine, and “the amount of lidocaine in a single 5 ounce bottle would not be expected to produce death.” Daniel McCann also points out the bottle was likely only half-full at best, after some weeks of usage. So this scientific conclusion remains a point of contention.]


A composite sketch of the woman seen with Annie McCann in the Little Italy section of Baltimore on Oct. 31, 2008. (COURTESY OF McCANN FAMILY)

Now the McCanns say they have identified a woman who was seen with Annie in Baltimore’s Little Italy the same day she ran away. They also say Annie had blunt force trauma on opposite sides of her forehead. The McCanns say they presented this new information to a new homicide commander in Baltimore at a Dec. 6 meeting — and that police haven’t followed up.

It gets worse, according to Daniel McCann. “After years of asking,” he said, “we still don’t know whether or not Annie was raped. The police refer us to the medical examiner, the medical examiner refers us to the police.” The McCanns think that’s an important thing to know in determining whether their daughter’s case was a suicide or homicide.

In addition, the McCanns said, the Maryland medical examiner has simply lost Annie’s organs, including her brain and heart, which they had suspected since an embalmer’s report in 2009. “The state has no right to abort our effort at Christian burial,” the McCanns said in a statement, “by carelessly losing our Annie’s brain and her heart, her very essence.”

A spokesman for the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene told the Baltimore Sun, while not commenting on the McCann case, that the medical examiner by law may hold onto organs after releasing a body for burial, and then dispose of the parts as medical waste.

The Baltimore police told The Sun they have not seen anything to indicate that Annie’s death was a homicide, and so did not need to interview the woman last seen with her. To a longtime observer of this case, it would seem that this woman might be the one person who could explain how Annie ingested lidocaine at all, and so would be worth the time and effort of Baltimore police to at least interview.

A retired homicide detective from Montgomery County located a Baltimore waitress at Vaccaro’s coffee shop in March 2009 who recalled seeing Annie with an older woman on Oct. 31, 2008. The detective and the waitress did a composite sketch of the woman. Now the McCanns and the detective, Davis W. Morton, believe they’ve positively identified the woman and connected her to the Catholic church of which Annie was a devout member.

The McCanns also think the Baltimore police should pressure Darnell Kinlaw, 21, for more information on the case. Kinlaw, who was a suspect in the theft of Annie’s car after she died (two juveniles were convicted of that), has now been charged in the killing of another woman after stealing her car.

The McCanns said they met with Baltimore Lt. Col. Garnell Green, the new homicide commander, and presented them with the new information. He took careful notes and promised to review the case and contact the McCanns’ private investigator. Green didn’t contact them again.

Instead, the police released a letter they sent to the McCanns last week from Green saying that “it is my position to keep the case open pending any creditable information that may assist the Medical Examiner’s office in changing their findings.” Green claimed the homicide section has always “kept the case ‘open’,” but former homicide commander Maj. Terrence McLarney told me in 2009, “That investigation is done ... Annie drank Bactine. It’s just a poison. People drink poison.”

Confused and as hurt as ever, Daniel McCann on Friday reiterated the key question, “How did so much lidocaine get in her body?”

He added, “We’ve been bringing them new information for three years. Witnesses. Sketches. World-class pathologist’s [Dr. Michael Baden] opinions [that a Bactine bottle doesn’t contain a lethal dose of lidocaine]. With Darnell Kinlaw, we don’t think there’s any harm in the police asking him about this.

“There’s an investigation to be done that hasn’t been done.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-state-of-nova/post/annie-mccanns-parents-keep-pushing-death-probe/2012/01/22/gIQAmcOJKQ_blog.html